Misjudgement

Misjudgement

Elise Adams turned twenty three the day her plane was hijacked.

            She boarded the aircraft feeling lightheaded. She had bought and drank a bottle of merlot at the departures lounge earlier that day, which left her mouth feeling dry and acidic.  She burped discreetly and felt bubbles of it rising inside her throat as she cross-referenced her flight ticket against the rows of velvet seating in front of her.

            “Do you mind if I pass you?” she asked a man in a green suit, nodding her head at the empty seat next to him.

            “My pleasure,” he said, rising to let her pass. Elise had never seen anyone dressed in a green suit before. She smiled politely as she passed him and wondered if he had picked out the suit for himself, or whether a partner had helped him in the choosing it.  She tried to steal a glance at his ring finger but his hands were rooting around in his hand luggage searching for something to keep him entertained during the flight. He would have been handsome, were it not for the suit.

            Elise turned away quickly, conscious that she might appear drunk if she stared in one direction for too long. She looked at her watch and decided she would not have another drink until she was at least twenty minutes into the flight, or in any case, above ground. Looking through the space between the seats in front she noticed a man with a large birthmark on the back of his palm flipping through a novel she had been meaning to read since she left school. She wondered whether to strike up a conversation with him about it, ask whether he was enjoying it, but feared he might try to steer the conversation towards her own thoughts, and she wouldn’t know what to say. She hadn’t read the book.

            A tannoy announced that the plane was due to take off and the man in the green suit put his hands together in prayer. Elise felt irritated by the gesture.

            “It’s alright, I’m a frequent flyer,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” The man looked at her, his tongue caught between his lips in a puzzled expression.

            “I’m a frequent flyer too...” he replied “And I thank God every time I make it safely back on His soil.”

            There was an awkward silence which followed the remark. Elise knew the man thought she should feel embarrassed – that she was one of those people that turned to God out of fear or greed, instead of thankfulness and gratitude.

            “Would you like to join me?” the man asked, his hands still curved in prayer. He was throwing her a life line – an opportunity to redeem herself, to be a good Christian, like himself.

            “No thank you,” she slurred. “I uh, I have no faith.”  The man’s lip recoiled into a moment of distaste; an expression that went un-noticed by Elise. “There was this one time, when I was five—“

            “I’m sorry,” he interrupted, his face rearranged into a tight lipped stare “I’d like to finish my prayer before we take off.” Elise felt the sting of his words as he tilted his head and silence ensued. As his head moved forward towards his palms, Elise pushed her own head backwards, jamming it against the headrest as hard as she could, her early childhood memory now hard to push from her agitated thoughts. Her twenty three year old mind was hazy, slowed by fermented grapes and a growing space of time since the incident had first happened.

            It was April, 1983. The trip to the Christian Camp at Lourdes had been planned months in advance by Elise’s parents and excitement tingled from toe to finger tip. Elise’s mother Angie told her that they were going to a place where angels lived, and that if she was lucky enough, she might even see one. Elise held this belief close to her heart and in the days before they were due to leave for the trip, she spent each night dreaming of the angels she hoped to befriend; beautiful creatures that would welcome her with open arms and golden smiles.

            She was at an age old enough to develop curiosity of the world around her, and young enough to harbour irrational fears of darkness. Elise had wandered away from her parents to go to the toilet. She hadn’t told them where she was going; she’d wanted to impress them that she had gone all by herself. When the lights turned off, Elise was sitting on the toilet, parlaysed by fear, and unable to move. She prayed to God in her mind, too scared to lift her arms in case monsters sensed her presence. She kept as still as she could, in the hours that passed, tears streaming softly down her face in the hours that passed.. After some time, the door flung open – Elise had been too small to reach the lock. There was a loud hum of a generator as the lights flickered into motion. It was then that Elise saw it. The Angel. It has scooped her up in its arms and returned her to her bed. When she woke up, she told her parents about the angel, who smiled, and told her she wasn’t to wander alone again. Elise told everyone she could about the Angel. The other campers sang songs about it round the camp fire, with acoustic guitars and roasted marshmallows, until Elise and her family went home again.

            When Elise woke, she was twenty three and sitting on an aircraft next to a man in a green suit, who was crying as he spoke into his mobile phone.

            “Don’t be mad, Erica, I know you’re going to be mad when you get this message, but don’t be. It’s not your fault. I love you. I’ll try again soon. We’ll speak again, I promise.”

            Elise was suddenly sobered by the scene taking place around her. Everyone was doing the same thing, shouting, crying - all had mobile phones in their hands. The man in the green suit was looking at her with red eyes.  

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you any sooner than I needed to... I didn’t know whether to wake you... I’m sorry, here,” he babbled, handing his phone to Elise. “If there’s anyone you need to call...” his voice hung in the air, punctuated by the scream of an air hostess as the man who had been reading the novel tied the hostess’ arms together. Three other men occupied the cockpit with the door thrown wide open. Elise couldn’t see the pilot.

            “That’s very kind of you,” Elise was surprised at the calmness of her voice. “It’s alright, you keep your battery. Keep trying your wife.” She wasn’t sure whether this had been the right thing to say, the man’s shoulders began to tremble as fresh tears swelled in his eyes, dripping down onto his green suit. She retrieved her own mobile from her bag under the seat in front of her. She dialled in her father’s mobile number; it was quicker than searching through her phone book for names. It too, clicked to answer machine. She didn’t know where her father was. She knew he would try to contact her sometime that day, on her birthday. She tried to block out the horror he would feel when he saw the awful news on the television and realised that his daughter was on that flight. She knew he would be trying to frantically contact her. That’s when the message would flash up that he received a missed call from her.  

            “Hi Dad, just a quick message to say that I know you’re probably going to ring me later to wish me happy birthday. I’ve had a great day, really, I have. Thank you for the card and the money. I... If we don’t speak later, I love you, Dad.”

            Elise put the phone back inside her bag and tucked it away again under the seat in front of her. She had no further use for it. The man beside her had also fallen silent, his mobile phone returned to his pocket. Both sat staring at the plastic trays attached to the backs of the chair in front, as if on a regular flight, waiting for the tea-trolley to roll down the aisle, so they could flip them down and rest glasses of merlot on them. Elise looked at the air hostess –tied to the trolley with a knife at her throat. She imagined the curve of her lipsticked lips as she pointed out the emergency exits at the start of the flight. Elise had been too drunk to notice.

            “So what happened when you were five?” the man in the green suit asked.

            “Shouldn’t you be praying?” said Elise.

She had a point.

            The man laughed. “I haven’t stopped praying yet.” Elise rolled a remark around on the tip of her tongue, biting it back. She wished the tea-trolley had come round. She needed more wine, perhaps even something stronger.

            “I thought I saw an Angel.” She said. The man looked impressed. “I, er, didn’t really see one...” she mumbled. “I just thought I did. We were at a Christian camp. My mother told me that it was a place where angels lived.”

            The man was smiling, as if he too were reliving old memories. His wife handing him a clean shirt that smelled like their laundry powder; his children dropping sticks into rivers from bridges, then racing to see which made it out first; his own angels.

            “I’d wandered away from my parents trying to go to the bathroom on my own. When I was in there, the lights went out, and I was scared too stiff to move. I must have been in there hours,” she said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. “Then all of a sudden, the lights came on, all that time in the dark it felt like a miracle, like I was seeing it for the first time. Like heaven. She came in and scooped me up, made me feel safe again.”

            “Your angel?” he asked hopefully.

            Elise shook her head. “I thought it was. I believed it was, back then. I told everyone at the camp, I was so proud to have seen one, when no one else had. But it wasn’t an angel. I didn’t realise until I was much older, but it wasn’t an angel.”

            “You think life got in the way of your angel? Lots of people question their faith, you know. It can be a tricky road to stick to, especially when you’re growing up. There’s a lot of pressure on kids.”

            “Nah, it wasn’t like that.” She said. “I thought the angel appeared from nowhere, like, from heaven or something. But it wasn’t. The lights had gone out because they were sensor generated, if I hadn’t been so scared and actually moved, I’d have brought the lights back up myself. Instead, my mother ran in after spending all that time searching for me, and that’s when they came on. There was no miracle. No angel. It was just my mom, and a bunch of energy efficient light bulbs.”

            “And you got old enough to realise it was all a bunch of science, and lost your faith?” the man asked.

            “When I got to school, I knew there were things that didn’t make sense to me. It was never science that made me question anything. My mom died when I was twelve. It was in her funeral, actually, that something clicked and I realised it was her I had seen that day, not an angel.”

            “And your mom never said anything? Never said it was her?”

            “I think she just wanted me to be happy. She wanted me to believe it, that there was someone out there, keeping me safe when I needed them.”

            “You never saw one since?” the man asked. Elise didn’t reply. The man looked disappointed. The aircraft took an awkward dive that made Elise’s stomach drop. She looked out of the portal at the approaching buildings coming into view.

            “Either way, I’ve got some respect for you, you know.” The man’s hands were trembling slightly. “Most people I know would be praying their ass off now, with...all this...going on. I got this neighbour back at home who never says what he believes in. He figures if he just plain don’t make up his mind, then whatever religion’s right at the end will just let him stroll on in to whatever heaven he got.”

            Elise smiled. “Whatever heaven he got...” she repeated. “I guess it’s all what you make of it really.”

            “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said quickly. “I just meant that people like that think they’ve got it all, you know? When the way I see it, they’ve got nothing...”

            Elise reached out for the man’s hand. He was scared. Everything had been leading up to this moment. He had spent his whole life believing in something, and he was about to find out whether there was someone waiting for him on the other side.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going to try my wife again...”

            It clicked to answer phone. The man put his mobile in the pocket of his green suit. The airplane took another shallow dip. Elise clutched his hand and closed her eyes.                                                                                         

            She waited for her angel to meet her on the other side.